


born from just one single glance

by MaddieandChimney



Series: Meet Cutes [6]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26542030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: Two strangers start talking at the airport bar when they both miss their flights to LA. She is a new divorcee on her way to start her new life with her brother and he is lost after an accident he thinks should have changed his life but didn't. Neither of them have any clue how small the world is.
Relationships: Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Meet Cutes [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927492
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

Maddie forces a smile on her face before she brings the glass of wine to her lips. She wasn’t entirely surprised she had managed to miss the flight she had booked on a whim to LA. She had made the decision to pack her bags and leave the home she had once shared with her ex-husband randomly, one night, when she realised that Hershey just wasn’t home anymore. Her brother was in LA and he was constantly telling her that she had nothing keeping her there anymore. She had finally taken him up on the offer of stealing his bed temporarily whilst she did a trial run.

She’d _thought_ the road trip would be fun but her car had made it to Chicago before it broke down and the price of a plane ticket was cheaper than what the mechanic had quoted her to fix it. “Rough night?”

The sound of a voice pulls her from her thoughts, her finger tracing around the edge of the wine glass once she places it back down on the bar. It takes her a moment to turn her head to look at the owner of the voice, already feeling irate that anyone would think she was remotely approachable sitting in the airport bar, on her own, at two in the morning. “Rough life.” She mumbles bitterly, only half meaning it because really, up until recently, it really hadn’t been that bad a life.

“Ah, I know that feeling.” She’s determined to tell him to go away until she really looks at him, eyes settling on a scar in the middle of his forehead for just a second before she looks into soft, kind eyes. There’s a nervous smile on his lips and a faint blush to his cheeks and he is cute, cute enough that it stops the words from falling from her lips and she instead finds herself smiling at him.

“I missed my flight.” She finally admits after a few beats of silence, “The next one isn’t until seven, so it’s going to be a long, long night.”

The stranger gives a nod of his head before he lifts the bottle of beer he had been holding to his lips and gulps the liquid down. She can’t help but admire him as she watches, biting down on her lip, quickly moving to gulp down what was left of her wine when she feels the way her chest clenches and no, she _can’t_ be feeling that way about anyone, especially not a stranger she’s met in a bar in probably the kind of scenario she’s seen in a movie at least a dozen times. “Can she have the same again?”

She wants to protest, but the fresh glass of wine is being poured in front of her and she had promised herself that things would be different when she started her new life. And part of that different meant she would be open to different experiences, taking a free glass of wine from a handsome man didn’t seem like too terrible an experience. “I missed my flight, too. I was here for a job interview and it went really well, which I wasn’t expecting so I started having a look around the city, you know, never been here before. Must have got lost in my own head because the next thing I know I’m running back to the hotel in a panic and then here and I missed it anyway.”

Maddie can’t keep her eyes off him as he talks, watching the slight bitter resentment he holds for himself as he does before she nods her head in understanding. “I was meant to be on a very long road trip to see my brother in LA, I made it from Hershey to here before my car decided to go up in smoke. I managed to get a last minute ticket and then still somehow missed my flight.” She shrugs, running her fingers up and down her wine glass.

He lets out a laugh and his smile is just endearing, she’s known him all of five minutes, she doesn’t know his name and already she’s thinking about how she can make him laugh like that again. “LA? Coincidentally, that’s the flight I missed. I’m meant to be in work tomorrow… well, today.” His nose scrunches up and he shakes his head, “I didn’t even tell them I was going for an interview, I had to come up with some lame excuse why I wanted to come all the way to Chicago in the first place.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m uh, a firefighter paramedic. Leaning more towards the paramedic side. I just thought I wanted something new, something different, you know? But now I’m here I can’t ever imagine leaving my friends… my family. How about you? What is it you do?”

It’s on the tip of her tongue that her brother is a firefighter too, but she’s not sure how much of her life she should give away to a man she’s just met and she’s not entirely certain how small the firefighter world in LA is. “As of two days ago I was an ER nurse. I’m going to stay with my brother for a while, see if the sun and beach life is for me.” She tries to drop it into conversation as casually as she can, as she takes a deep breath, the words still feeling foreign on her tongue, “I just got a divorce, well not just—a few months ago but the house just sold so I handed in my notice and thought I’d try somewhere new. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania my whole life but if LA is good enough for my little brother.” She lets out a small laugh, ducking her head when she feels her cheeks heating up.

She’d been married for twelve years, so just saying the word ‘divorce’ out loud felt… embarrassing, even to someone she had never spoken to before and had never met her husband. “I’m uh—not sure if I should say sorry or—”

“No, no, definitely not sorry. Definitely a good thing, he was…” She trails off, gulping down some of her wine to stop herself from revealing too much information about her cheating asshole of an ex-husband, forcing a smile on her lips when she’s turning back to him, “… he was _something_. Moving on, moving up. And the best thing about LA is that if I don’t like it, at least I’ll be leaving there with a tan.”

The man seems to get the hint as he grins at her and clinks his bottle of beer against her glass, “Well, here’s to your new start and here is to me facing my friends and hoping they don’t find out where I was because that would be—let’s just say it would not go down well. I’m Howie, by the way, I don’t think I said that.”

“No, you didn’t, I’m Maddie.” She watches as he holds out his hand, and she grins as she takes his hand in hers and shakes it gently, “So, let’s blame medical curiosity but—”

“The scar on my head?” He seems to be getting more comfortable as he turns in the seat a little and beams at her, gesturing to his forehead, “Oh, you are looking at a medical marvel right now.” His eyes are alight with excitement and she finds herself turning so her body is facing him completely, her own smile growing when she looks at him. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“Oh, please, I’m sure I’ve _seen_ crazier than whatever you’re about to tell me. Try me.”

Howie laughs, the kind of laugh that sends her heart thumping rapidly against her chest and her cheeks to flush. The kind of laugh she wants to hear again, which sounds completely crazy the moment she thinks about it because it’s been about fifteen minutes and he’s just some guy she’ll probably never see again once they touch down in LA. “If you can one up this, I’ll even _show_ you pictures.” He says, with a teasing wink that causes her cheeks to flush even more as she laughs.

“Oh, you are showing me those pictures no matter what.”

“Deal, so…” 


	2. Chapter 2

Maddie can’t remember the last time she had laughed so much, until her chest feels heavy and her sides hurt. Their drinks had been quickly abandoned, in lieu of some late night or rather, early morning, meal from the nearest place they could find open. Did time even exist in the airport anyway? She’s not entirely certain as she sits there grinning at the man across from her, in front of her stack of pancakes at four in the morning.

He’s chatty, she’s not entirely certain he’s even stopped talking since they sat down but she can’t stop herself from just watching him as he talks. His eyes are alight with eagerness as he talks about one of the craziest calls he’s ever been on, her hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee as she tilts her head to look at him. “You love your job.” She finally says, smiling when he does, “I can tell by the way you talk about it. Passionate, excited, even after doing it for so long… it’s nice.”

“Do you like your job?”

Maddie thinks about it for a second – did she like being a nurse? “I think so.” She shrugs as she talks, she had loved her job once, she really had. “I love helping people but I think maybe I’ve burnt out and I’m not—I don’t love it. Not right now. But maybe I can someday.” Truthfully, Maddie isn’t entirely certain if it was just the hospital she hated, considering every single nurse she had once considered a friend had slept with her ex-husband at some point. Perhaps it was just that bitter memory that was polluting her thoughts and feelings towards the job she had once adored.

Howie only grins, as he stirs his straw around the milkshake she had laughed about him getting, “I’m sure you’ll find something you love doing, if you don’t fall back in love with nursing. Honestly, I was lost for a long time, it took an accidental fire at the bar I worked out for me to even discover what I wanted to do with my life in the first place. And I’ve had moments too, where I’ve felt as though I was going to burn out but—I can’t imagine doing anything else. The pay isn’t great, the hours aren’t the best but I actually feel useful, I feel like I’m doing something good which is… after years of feeling hopeless is a great feeling.”

There’s that passion again, the lopsided smile as he talks that causes her heart to flutter as she bites down on her lip. “We’ll see if LA helps bring back some of that passion for me.” She pauses for a second, unable to stop her eyes from lingering on his left hand as though looking for any traces of a ring because why an earth would someone like him be single? He’s handsome, kind, funny and successful in his career choice. It seems too good to be true that the man sitting across from her wouldn’t be in a relationship but she also knows that experience has tainted her. A sixteen year relationship that had been marred entirely by the fact he had been cheating on her for at least ten years of that. “So, you’re single?”

It’s the way he smirks and waggles his eyebrows that causes her to blush, taking a sip of her coffee in an attempt to distract herself before he nods his head. “I am very much single, I had a girlfriend before the accident but um, it just wasn’t meant to be. It was weird… before I had a piece of metal through my head, I had a girlfriend who I was going to ask to marry me for all the wrong reasons and then when I woke up from the coma a few days later, I was single.” She almost drops her coffee, trying to think what kind of person would just leave whilst the other was injured so horrifically before Howie shakes his head, “I-I was sad about it for a long time but we weren’t meant to be together. And now she’s pregnant and she’s found the man she’s meant to be with and I’m still alive, that’s something to be grateful for, right?”

“My ex-husband spent most of our marriage sleeping with anyone and everyone. We’ve been divorced about four months and his girlfriend is already eight months pregnant, so figure that one out.” She feels relief when it doesn’t come out as angrily as it used to, not feeling that rage bubbling up inside of her as it so often does.

“I’m so so—”

“No, don’t apologise, it’s—it’s not fine, I feel like I’ve wasted most of my life with him but I’m thirty-five and there’s still plenty of time to have a fresh start. Hopefully in LA where the sun is shining and my annoying little brother can annoy me in person and not over the phone.”

Howie just nods his head, the sad look on his face quickly shaken off when he takes a deep breath, “I guess we don’t have long until we gotta catch our flight but um, would you like my number? No pressure, you don’t have to call or text or anything but if you want a friend in LA or just someone to show you around, then I’d love to be that person.”

It would be hard to say no to, especially whilst he’s smiling nervously at her and she can see how his hand is trembling slightly before she slides her phone over to him and nods her head. “I might take you up on that, someday.”


End file.
